Taito begins selling BlazBlue Continuum Shift II globally

Taito just announced a couple of hours ago that they are now selling the AkSys Games BlazBlue Continuum Shift II arcade boards globally. The exact tweet goes as follows:

TAITO has begun global sales of the arcade game BLAZBLUE CONTINUUM SHIFT II! Interested parties may contact us here: http://bit.ly/m1tUh8

This follows the release a short time ago of Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Versus boards in the US by Taito as well. Taito has really begun taking the charge on bringing these fighters out to non-Japanese arcades lately and it will be interesting to see how the trend continues. Another reason this is notable is that BBCS2 has been available in Japan for a few months already after Taito released their download-only NESiCAxLive platform, in fact it was the platform’s launch title. That has irritated a few arcade board collectors since it meant that you couldn’t get your hands on a specific board for BlazBlue 2 – but now you can. No pricing or other details have been released about this so far but I will be interested to see how operators outside of Japan take to this. BlazBlue has begun to get a little bit of a following out there, although it still pales in comparison to something like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Perhaps as it becomes more available in different arcades out there, that will begin to change.

I’ve added the game to the “Already Released” categories under the North America and Europe on our New Games Watch page